Unmentionable!

by Paul Jennings

Book Overview

First published in 1991, winner of the 1992 Kids Own Australian Literature Award (NSW). Collection of nine humorous stories by well-known children's writer whose other publications include 'Uncanny',... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140373993
• Release Date: December 1995
• Publisher: Puffin
• Length: 132 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 20.0" x 20.0" x 20.0"

Customer Reviews

Worth a Mention

"Unmentionable!" is the sixth collection of quirky short stories for kids by Australian author Paul Jennings, originally published in 1991. It's technically the eighth collection of his stories, if you count "The Naked Ghost, Burp & Blue Jam" (a collection of his early work) and his novelization of his television series "Round the Twist", which presented selected episodes as short stories. Ah well... He might not be that well known in America, but if you were an Australian kid in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Paul Jennings was something of a superstar. He did for reading in Australia in the 1990s what J.K Rowling did for reading this decade with her "Harry Potter" series. Even kids who usually hated books could get into Paul Jennings. His writing style, though not the most polished in the world, was just the way Australian kids think and feel, and is full of things kids can relate to: (school, bullies, getting in trouble, etc), plus he had a wacky imagination, was full of ideas and had a sort of slapstick, sometimes gross out, sense of humour that you could really visualise. I know when I was in third grade, when I first started reading Paul Jennings, he very quickly became a hero of mine, one of my first. When we had private writing time in class, I wanted to be Paul Jennings. He was a Melbourne guy, which I really admired. He described places and suburbs I could actually go to and visit, he had taught at schools just up the road from mine. I got this particular book, "Unmentionable", with it's 9 short stories on my 9th birthday. It's the last one in what I'd call, as a fan, Jennings golden age. He released it after his television series "Round The Twist" had taken off, and four of the stories here ("Ice Maiden", "Birdman", "Little Squirt" and "Sloppy Jalopy") were adapted into episodes of the second series. It is a collection has a couple of his most famous stories, and the lesser known tales are just as good as the known ones. Here's a rundown: "Ice Maiden" tells us a tale of a boy who falls in love with an ice sculpture of a young woman in a butcher's shop window. When it gets thrown out, he tries to rescue it, a plan that results in chaos and embarrassment for the poor boy. "Birdman" is probably my favorite in this book. It's all about a birdman contest, where kids make wings and other flying contraptions, then jump off the pier and see how far they can fly with them. Sean doesn't have much of a chance, that is until he discovers a hat made out of a cat washed up on the beach. It's something of a copy cat, when it sees someone doing something, the wearer of the hat repeats the actions the cat-hat sees perfectly. Perhaps Sean could win the contest with it. Perhaps it will all go horribly wrong. "Little Squirt" takes place in a urinal of a school toilet block. That's all I'll say about that one... "The Mouth Organ" is a classic Jennings story. A busker girl receives an enchanted mouth organ from a mysterious ponytailed man. The

Unmentionable: Worth A Mention

"Unmentionable!" is the sixth collection of quirky short stories for kids by Australian author Paul Jennings, originally published in 1991. It's technically the eighth collection of his stories, if you count "The Naked Ghost, Burp & Blue Jam" (a collection of his early work) and his novelization of his television series "Round the Twist", which presented selected episodes as short stories. Ah well... He might not be that well known in America, but if you were an Australian kid in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Paul Jennings was something of a superstar. He did for reading in Australia in the 1990s what J.K Rowling did for reading this decade with her "Harry Potter" series. Even kids who usually hated books could get into Paul Jennings. His writing style, though not the most polished in the world, was just the way Australian kids think and feel, and is full of things kids can relate to: (school, bullies, getting in trouble, etc), plus he had a wacky imagination, was full of ideas and had a sort of slapstick, sometimes gross out, sense of humour that you could really visualise. I know when I was in third grade, when I first started reading Paul Jennings, he very quickly became a hero of mine, one of my first. When we had private writing time in class, I wanted to be Paul Jennings. He was a Melbourne guy, which I really admired. He described places and suburbs I could actually go to and visit, he had taught at schools just up the road from mine. I got this particular book, "Unmentionable", with it's 9 short stories on my 9th birthday. It's the last one in what I'd call, as a fan, Jennings golden age. He released it after his television series "Round The Twist" had taken off, and four of the stories here ("Ice Maiden", "Birdman", "Little Squirt" and "Sloppy Jalopy") were adapted into episodes of the second series. It is a collection has a couple of his most famous stories, and the lesser known tales are just as good as the known ones. Here's a rundown: "Ice Maiden" tells us a tale of a boy who falls in love with an ice sculpture of a young woman in a butcher's shop window. When it gets thrown out, he tries to rescue it, a plan that results in chaos and embarrassment for the poor boy. "Birdman" is probably my favorite in this book. It's all about a birdman contest, where kids make wings and other flying contraptions, then jump off the pier and see how far they can fly with them. Sean doesn't have much of a chance, that is until he discovers a hat made out of a cat washed up on the beach. It's something of a copy cat, when it sees someone doing something, the wearer of the hat repeats the actions the cat-hat sees perfectly. Perhaps Sean could win the contest with it. Perhaps it will all go horribly wrong. "Little Squirt" takes place in a urinal of a school toilet block. That's all I'll say about that one... "The Mouth Organ" is a classic Jennings story. A busker girl receives an enchanted mouth organ from a mysterious ponytailed man. There's s

funny and interesting

Unmentionable is a good book because: it's funny and interesting. Our favorite story in the book was the Birdman.Birdman is about a boy named Spider and his friends Sean. Sean foundn a crate on the beach and he opened it and found that a hat was in it and that the hat opened it's eyes and made the person wearing it copyed what it saw We can't tell you any more